Anne Colleton
|nationality = |birth = |death = |cause of death = ( ) |occupation = , , |parents = Mr. Colleton |family = Tom and Jacob (brothers) |political party = (until 1918) (1918-1922; 1929-1941) |type of appearance = Direct }}Anne Colleton (1886-1941) was a prosperous South Carolina planter and Confederate politico. She was very attractive, extremely intelligent with a good knack for business and was known to use her beauty and feminine charm to her advantage. Her plantation, Marshlands, had been in her family since Revolutionary times. After her plantation was destroyed in the Red Rebellion during the Great War, Colleton became an early if not particularly faithful supporter of the Freedom Party. She was killed in the opening days of the Second Great War. Anne considered herself a progressive, modern woman who set trends rather than follow them. This was seen in the modern art exhibition she put on just before the war broke out where she displayed works by the controversial French artist Marcel Duchamp. She wasn't above seducing even the CS President, or at least seriously contemplating it, if she thought it would bring her some sort of advantage. She had two younger brothers, Jacob and Tom. Both joined the CS Army after the Great War broke out and they both used their high social status to gain high ranks in the army. Jacob was victim of a U.S. poison gas attack, and was left badly injured. He returned home to Marshlands, and was cared for by the staff. At about this time, Anne met CS submersible commander, Roger Kimball, who became her occasional lover. She was in a Charleston hotel with Kimball when the Red Rebellion broke out. Unbeknownst to her, several of her workers were die-hard Marxists. They had killed Jacob and burned down the mansion at Marshlands during the revolt. Despite her power, Anne was not able to get to Marshlands immediately because of the rebellion (indeed, one Major Jerome Hotchkiss confiscated her car for his troops to use). Once she found out about what had happened at Marshlands, she vowed revenge on the rebels. Anne refused to relocate to St. Matthews or even Charleston, deciding to live in a refugee camp with plans to return to the plantation. When she finally did return, she was saddened, and angered, by the sight of the charred mansion where she grew up. She moved into one of the abandoned cottages (ironically the one that Cassius had lived in) and made a deal with the remaining field hands, who agreed to work for her again if she kept away any authorities who inquired after the survivors of the Congaree Socialist Republic. She kept a revolver on her at all times, which saved her life at least twice. Anne's efforts to restart Marshlands met with failure. Her enemies Cassius and Cherry were hiding out in the woods near her plantation and they tried to kill her by burning down her cabin. She was in the outhouse at the time and she escaped any injury. After that event, she didn't restart the plantation and she lived in an apartment in St. Matthews. While traveling on business, she ran into two of her former employees, Scipio and Pericles who were both living under false names. She later coerced Scipio in returning to Marshlands where she interrogated him as to what happened the night of the rebellion and how her youngest brother had died. She made it her duty to hunt down the remaining Reds, but the CSA couldn't spare her any troops beyond the local militia until after the war was over. As the war ended and the troops demobilized, her brother Tom recruited veterans to finish the job Anne started, eliminating Cassius and the rest of his outlaws. Revenge came one night when Anne was informed that Cherry had been spotted on the estate, ostensibly looking for Anne's "treasure" which she believed the Colletons had buried somewhere. Whilst observing Cherry berating her workforce, Anne noted wryly that Cherry would have made an excellent plantation owner before a skirmish broke out. The militia attacked. Anne chased the wounded Cherry down. Cherry goaded Anne into killing her by recounting how she seduced Jacob and used him to the last. For her hunt, Anne had her tailor make her several pairs of trousers which the fashion conscious set in South Carolina imitated, a trend which spread across the CSA which pleased Anne to no end. Being a shrewd financier, Anne could see what was going to happen to the CSA's economy and ordered her broker to liquidate her assets and buy as many US Dollars and German Marks as possible. Her broker advised against but she was insistent. A few months later, he had to discharge himself from her duties as he had to declare bankruptcy after not following her advice. He was able to tell her she was about the only plantation owner still left in "the game", along with the steel-men of Alabama, the copper kings of Sonora, and the oil men of Texas. Anne also began reevaluating her political priorities after her some-time lover Kimball took up residence in Charleston and put her in contact with the fledgling Freedom Party. Upon meeting Jake Featherston in person, Anne guaranteed him the vote in South Carolina. She helped gather funds for the party, and actually designed the basic model of a Freedom Party rally, which in turn became the hallmark of all party rallies. Anne quickly became part of the inner circle of the party, but that changed in 1922, when President Wade Hampton V was assassinated during a Whig Party rally by a Freedomite named Grady Calkins in Birmingham, Alabama. The whole country turned on the Freedom Party after that. Just as with her finances, Anne decided to liquidate her political assets before they too became a liability by withdrawing from the Freedom Party altogether. She also ended her relationship with Kimball, who refused to walk away with her. Anne rejoined the Whig Party, but she was considered a radical and was cast as an outsider which displeased her no end. Again her financial wizardry saved her from the stock market crash of 1929 with most of her money. She began a relationship with former intelligence officer, Clarence Potter, who was working as a private detective at the time. Although intense, their burgeoning relationship was cut short when it became clear that the Freedom Party were the chief beneficiaries of the economic collapse and Featherston was on his way to the Gray House. Anne began realigning herself with the Freedom Party; Potter, who hated the Freedom Party, vocally disagreed with this decision. Anne perceived Potter's opinions to be an act of control and broke off the relationship. Once Jake Featherston became President, Anne carefully worked her way back into good graces, although he didn't trust her completely. In 1934, he sent Anne to France to assure their place as an ally and to develop close links with Action Francaise. In her two years in France, she in turn developed a close working relationship with Colonel Jean-Henri Jusserand while at the court of King Charles XI and the two organizations began to plan against their mutual enemies. Anne became something of a roving ambassador after this, going places where ordinary diplomats couldn't go. In Spring 1937, she was sent to Baton Rouge with the task of putting Huey Long, the dictatorial Radical Liberal governor of Louisiana, back in place along with the rest of the CSA. Long refused, and was promptly assassinated on Anne's signal. She was also able to renew her relationship with Potter after he saved Featherston's life at the 1936 Olympic Games in Richmond. On the eve of the Second Great War, Anne was dining at the Huntsman's Lodge in Augusta when she spotted Scipio waiting tables. She didn't say anything to him, but made an inquiry to his boss, Jerry Dover. Dover vehemently denied that the waiter was Scipio, mainly because he didn't like Colleton's high-handed manner, nor did he want to lose his best employee. Anne was killed during the retaliatory bombing of Charleston by the USS Remembrance while attending a speech by a fiery congressman with a name like "Storm" in the early days of the Second Great War. She and other delegates initially attempted to ride out the air raid, but were forced to flee. On the way to the shelter, Anne was disemboweled by exploding shrapnel. Many of the surviving men in her life, including her brother, Potter, Featherston, and Scipio, could not believe Colleton was gone as she had seemed as much a "force of nature as a person" and often reflected on how much of an influence she had been on their lives. Category:Colletons